Although often overlooked, special teams are the third element of football. The adage: offense sells tickets, and the defense wins games could be seen as accurate by many. However, special teams play requires a lot of grit and toughness, and one big special teams play can break the game open.
Dwayne Stukes, the new special teams coordinator for the Denver Broncos, knows what type of players are needed to compete for special teams. Last season, Stukes was the assistant special teams’ coach for the Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams. With his chance to run his unit, Stukes wants players on his special teams to have an attacking mindset.
“Obviously [we] want guys that are good athletes, that’s first and foremost,” Stukes said Wednesday. “Guys that can move in space. We want physical guys. We want violent guys. That’s just my mindset; that’s just my mentality. You have to have some type of physicality, some type of violent nature of not yourself, to perform at a high level on the football field in my opinion.
“There’s no need — or no room — for guys to be soft and passive on the field. Like I said before, and I’m going to stand by this, we want to have an attack mentality. We do want to physical. We do want to be violent. We do want to dictate the flow of the game to our opponents. I’m not going to shy away from that.”
The Broncos have assembled a coaching staff that has had varied success in the NFL to change the culture into a winning one. Stukes’s championship pedigree should help the Broncos mold the third phase of football into good shape.
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